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University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

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Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#161

Post by vageli »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #44
josefresco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;…

Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.

> Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.

Is this true even when gathering evidence of a crime?

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#162

Post by ceejayoz »

briffle wrote: post #150
alistairSH wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GOP has the majority of state governors. GOP has the majority of state legislatures. Both of the above are currently drawing Congressional districts based on the latest census data. Both of the above are currently rolling out voting rules that are nominally about preventing fraud (of which there is zero evidence of anything widespread) but will impact the ability of people to vote.

Oregon just got a new House Rep member, and if you look at the new maps it has created, its pretty obvious this isn't a one party problem.

Gerrrymandering indeed has a long history, and it's a bit like nukes - if the other side is already using them, it's hard to hold off on your side.

In 2018, North Carolina saw 50% of the vote go to Republicans, but they received 77% of the Congressional seats. A couple rounds of that is a recipe for a permanent minority for the other party.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#163

Post by cormacrelf »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #44
josefresco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;…

Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.

Sorry, where does it say that all proof must be in the form of an audio recording? Prosecuting crimes worked perfectly fine before the invention of the tape recorder.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#164

Post by _-david-_ »

alistairSH wrote: post #58
jtbayly wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which party? Presumably the one that has control of the House, Senate, and Oval Office?

GOP has the majority of state governors. GOP has the majority of state legislatures. Both of the above are currently drawing Congressional districts based on the latest census data. Both of the above are currently rolling out voting rules that are nominally about preventing fraud (of which there is zero evidence of anything widespread) but will impact the ability of people to vote.

You should look at Democratic states. Illinois looks quite gerrymandered as well. I think Maryland (maybe?) was quite bad as well. This is a bipartisan thing. It just so happens that Republicans have the majority of states.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#165

Post by inetsee »

mankyd wrote: post #143
ajay-b wrote: post #138

That’s… Wow, since when can someone bar someone else from testifying in court? I thought it was the pursuit of truth?

Expert witnesses are hired as contractors; paid for their testimony. If they were being subpoenaed - compelled to be a witness - I am sure the matter would be different.

A naive legal question: can the plaintiffs subpoena the professors as expert witnesses?

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#166

Post by Consultant32452 »

ajay-b wrote: post #138

That’s… Wow, since when can someone bar someone else from testifying in court? I thought it was the pursuit of truth?

This is not an endorsement, but a clarification.

They're allowed to testify in court. They are just not allowed to get paid to do it, nor are they allowed to use their affiliation with the university as credentials when testifying because they are not speaking for the university.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#167

Post by mcherm »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #144
ianai wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. With all the anti-democratic practices being rolled out across the states it’s pretty scary to imagine things even a year from now and a long time forward. Life threats against election officials and all the way up to Senators. Gerrymandering. Even the SCOTUS is biased. Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party rule.

> Seems civics in the US are about to be rigged for one party rule. The good news is that it doesn't actually work that way. First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody can gerrymander that away. Drawing the lines different affects what party platforms need to be in order to get half of the seats, but there will still be two parties and they will still each control the government half of the time. Which…

> First past the post results in a two party system. Nobody can gerrymander that away.

Really?

Consider the Democratic party lock on the US southern states for roughly 50 years after reconstruction.[1] A huge portion of the population wasn't permitted to vote (despite laws on the books being racially blind, most blacks were prevented from voting in many of these states up until the passage of the Voting Rights Act. And even among those who DID vote, a single party remained utterly dominant.

Does this counterexample mean anything to you?

(PS: I agree with you that I'm strongly in favor of changes to our voting system to move away from first-past-the-post and government gerrymandering. But I'm NOT going to claim that single party rule is impossible when there are hundreds of examples of it across the world.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_South

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#168

Post by andrew_ »

jaywalk wrote: post #114
sonotathrowaway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest threat to democracy has occurred from people who espouse language just like this, in several recent instances: the insurrection attempt on January 6th, where conspirators attempted to use violence to overturn a free and fair election, in Michigan, where factions of that same ideology planned the kidnapping and public execution of democratically elected leaders, and spates of domestic terrorism across the…

>factions of that same ideology planned the kidnapping and public execution of democratically elected leaders Are you talking about the plot the FBI cooked up against Whitmer? The one that's in the process of being laughed out of court? Your bias has completely blinded you to reality.

Sad to see this downvoted. Shows just how many have accepted the propaganda fed to them without doing any of their own diligence on the topic. This was an egregious abuse of power by federal law enforcement [1], regardless of the heinousness of the scheme.

[1] https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2021/08/dark-shadow-...

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#169

Post by _jal »

isoskeles wrote: post #141
ceejayoz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a... > For Settles to get one of those, his name has to match his birth certificate — and it doesn’t. In 1964, when he was 14, his mother married and changed his last name. After Texas passed a new voter-ID law, officials told Settles he had to show them his name-change certificate from 1964 to qualify for a new identification card to vote. > So with the help…

Pretty clear not an illegal poll tax since this man is an edge case who uses a name with no proof. It’s sad that this is ultimately his mother’s fault, and he can’t ask her for the $250 to fix this.

Always nice to see people willing to write off other peoples' disenfranchisement as a rounding error or 'worth it' (whatever 'it' is.)

That is exactly the attitude the authoritarians are counting on.

This is how you lose your own representation.

Re: University of Florida bars professors from testifying in a voting rights case

#170

Post by ninjinxo »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #44
josefresco wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like clear "witness intimidation" aka "Tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant" https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1512 (b)Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to— (1)influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;…

Cannot prove it unless the victim was in a state that allows one party consent audio recording and was recording audio. Although Florida is the only southern state that requires all party consent for recording audio, and I presume the previous poster was talking about Texas. Smartphones have solved the recording audio problem, so presumably it would have been possible.

Aren't there usually provisions to override requiring all party consent, if it becomes reasonably necessary as criminal (not civil) evidence or for your own legal/physical protection?

Edit: I looked into it, nope, Florida is utterly insane - a child didn't get consent to record their rapist soliciting/threatening them, so the evidence was denied;

On December 11, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court held in McDade v. State, 154 So. 3d 292 (Fla. 2014), that a defendant accused of child molestation has an expectation of privacy in conversations between him and his victim taking place in their shared residence where he asked her to have sex with him and also alluded to his prior acts of sexual abuse.

...

the court concluded that the Secrecy of Communications Act’s (SCA), F.S. Ch. 934, et seq. (2014), plain language barred the trial court’s admission of a recorded conversation between McDade and his victim into evidence. The decision may surprise some, especially when one considers that the victim’s actions in McDade also constituted a crime under the SCA and authorized the criminal defendant in that case to sue the victim under the statute’s civil cause of action

https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/mcdade-v-...

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1633...

https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/2014/sc13...

They have since made a exclusion for this scenario, allowing children to record talking to their abusers.

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2015/7001

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